GEO Human Planet

The ways in which humans impact the environment—the scale, severity, and types of impact—changes every day. Without the ability to understand, quantify, and assess human impact, all communities are at risk. However, there is currently a lack of open, inclusive, and consistent data that can help governments and decision-makers assess humanity's impact on the planet.

Human Planet Initiative produces, integrates, and compares global datasets on the built environment and population, as well as their attributes. The data is used in socioeconomic pathways, to measure SDG indicators, compute exposure to hazards information, estimate emissions and demand for resources, and quantify global urbanization.

Services:

Datasets: Global Built-Up Spatial Grids Datasets: Global Population Spatial Grid Datasets: Population Projections Dataset: Global Human Settlements Datasets: Urban Center Database Datasets: Functional Urban Areas

Planned outputs of the initiative:

The 2020-2022 HPI plan included the following tasks.

1. Global historical baseline data on population and built-up areas 1975-1990-2000-2015: Various sensors (MSS, TM, ETM), input spatial resolution (60, 30, 15 meters), integration with global EO-derived land cover and voluntary geographic information (OpenStreetMap) for driving the automatic machine learning process. Global population grids at 250m of spatial resolution by integrating EO-derived built-up areas with global census sources from CIESIN.
2. Global spatial baseline data on built-up areas from Sentinel sensors (10m): Global built-up areas detection and characterization using Sentinel 2 data of the EU Copernicus program. 10m spatial resolution, yearly updates starting from 2019.
3. Global spatial baseline data on built-up based on integrating different sensors: Global built-up areas detection and characterization using Sentinel 1 and 2 data of the EU Copernicus program, with 10m spatial resolution, yearly updates starting from 2019.
4. Global settlement classification schema and indicators: harmonized definition of the spatial extension the global human settlements based on density of population and built-up infrastructures. Rural-urban continuous. City-level aggregation of exposure, impact, and accessibility indicators.
5. Global high-resolution age-structured population maps 2000-2022: Through funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the WorldPop project (www.worldpop.org) will lead construction of global population distribution maps for the 2000- 2020 period.
6. Global settlement classification schema and indicators: harmonized definition of the spatial extension of global human settlements based on density of population and built-up infrastructures. Rural-urban continuous. City-level aggregation of exposure, impact, and accessibility indicators.
7. Regional and national show cases: Processing of national image archive for national based built-up.
8. Human Planet Web Platform Description: HPI communication web platform hosted possibly through the GEO secretariat. The HPI will promote the exchange of data and the access of HPI product to partners, scientists, expert groups, and decision-makers. HPI fast data web visualization interface (HPI-WVI), based on JEODPP technology hosted at JRC IT facilities.
9. Human Planet Atlas releases: Periodic publication of the Human Planet Atlas (HPA) to present the initiative’s core evidence and derived indicators. The Atlas includes a facts-and-figures section, a cross-cutting thematic section, and an executive summary delivering periodic key messages and narratives based on the core evidence and derived indicators.

HPI generates information that helps decision-makers strengthen crisis management and disaster response. It also strengthens development efforts including urban planning and sustainable human settlements.

Actual Deliverables:

From 2017-2019, HUMAN-PLANET’s Global Human Settlement working group (WG) produced the following global baseline data:

1. GHS_BUILT: global map of built-up areas using remotely sensed data input collected by the Landsat platform in the epochs 1975, 1990, 2000, and 2014. Various sensors involved MSS, TM, ETM.
2. GHS_POP: global resident population grids in the epochs 1975, 1990, 2000, and 2015 estimated by merging GHS_BUILT with population census data harmonized by the CIESIN.
3. GHS_SMOD: global multi-temporal settlement model and urban-rural spatial classification schema based on the GHS_BUILT and GHS_POP baseline data.
4. Human Planet Atlas for 2016, 2017, 2018.

In the near-term, the Human Planet Initiative aims to support the post-2015 international frameworks, including: the UN Third Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III, 2016), the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030.

Steering Committee - Working Group (WG) leads make up the steering committee.

The WG Leads will nominate members of the steering committee.

• WG_01: Earth Observation data extraction (JRC)

• WG_02: Information integration (CIESIN, JRC)

• WG_03: Modeling (JRC, CIESIN, CUNY)

• WG_04: Fitness for Purpose (CIESIN, JRC)

• WG_05: Dissemination (CIESIN, JRC)

Currently HPI is made up of 12 expert groups organized by thematic areas and governed by a steering committee. Each expert group benefits from access to all common datasets including pre-release of the baseline data. The experts of the thematic areas will provide advice in selecting input data sources (collect); in designing and implementation specific indicators; in reviewing the results (test); and in providing advice in the outreach activities.

Human Planet Expert Groups:

1. Global harmonized definition of cities and settlements: European Commission, DG for Regional and Urban Policy
2. Global Settlements in Disaster Risk Reduction: UNOOSA, UN-SPIDER Program
3. Global Urban Climate and Mitigation Planning: University of Dublin, World Urban Database and Access Portal Tool (WUDAPT)
4. Global updated and historical baseline data on built-up areas: European Commission, Joint Research Centre
5. Global high resolution age-structured population maps 2000-2020: Univ. of Southampton, WorldPop Project, Flowminder Foundation
6. Global Settlements, Infrastructure, and Population Data Inter-comparison: Columbia University, Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN)
7. Global future population grids including demography and migration: City University New York, Demographic Research
8. Global urban metabolism: University of Denver, Geography & Environment
9. Urbanization dynamics in China and the “one belt one road” region: Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth
10. Capacity building and traineeships: University of Twente, Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation
11. Poverty Mapping: George Washington University, Center for Urban and Environmental Research